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Too Human Meets Mediocre Reviews

Posted by Soulskill on from the norse-cyborgs dept.

Earlier this week, the long anticipated action-adventure game, Too Human, was finally released for the Xbox 360. After being in various stages of development for about a decade, the game made its US debut to overall lackluster marks. Gamespot weighed in with a 5.5/10, while IGN gave it a slightly more favorable 7.8. Developer Denis Dyack from Silicon Knights defended the game, saying players didn't yet "get it," and that it was "so innovative that we have put some people off." The game's reception in Japan has been similar.

14 of 195 comments (clear)

  1. Some dev's are clueless... by blahplusplus · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Just because you have the skills to develop a game, does not mean you know how to develop a gaming experience.

    There are developers that know how to develop entertaining gaming experience, and their are dev's that just know how to make games without a decent ability to judge whether or not what they are developing is exciting, interesting and entertaining and doesn't suck.

    This is a big problem in the industry as far as I'm concerned, there is just too many clueless people (pub's and developers) about how to build entertainment. I think the biggest problem is still the technology. There is so much time and money consuming technical engineering that it overtakes the money and time needed to develop the entertainment aspect. Too much on art and engines, not enough on developing interesting things and connecting them with skill.

    Striking a balance is hard, I agree, but that's the business you're really in: Entertainment. Game developers have to be good at knowing entertainment as well as engineering. It's hard, no doubt... and sometimes you just want to keep trying just doing your own thing (which is also valid) but if you want to do your own thing, you got to go back to small time games and understand what aspects of both the art, and the interaction of the objects, makes the game. Some indie game developers know this, they know what is wrong with the industry.

    1. Re:Some dev's are clueless... by azuredrake · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Striking a balance is hard, I agree, but that's the business you're really in: Entertainment. Game developers have to be good at knowing entertainment as well as engineering. It's hard, no doubt... and sometimes you just want to keep trying just doing your own thing (which is also valid) but if you want to do your own thing, you got to go back to small time games and understand what aspects of both the art, and the interaction of the objects, makes the game. Some indie game developers know this, they know what is wrong with the industry.

      These are actually different jobs in game development. The Game Designer needs a passing knowledge of something like Maya or Max in order to place objects into the gameworld, but for the most part, Designers are the ones in charge of the skillful creation of entertaining content you outlined above.

      The other positions which play into the technical knowledge vs. fun tug-of-war you mentioned are engineers and producers, for the most part. Engineers are in charge of maintaining and upgrading aspects of the engine used for the game so that the content the designers want can be created. And producers are in charge of delivering the product on-time and on-budget, so they ultimately may be responsible for cutting content the engineers and designers want to put in.

      My real point is just that your tirade is... slightly uninformed. Not totally devoid of merit - it's true that some designers are bad at gauging the "fun" of their systems and are designing just for themselves. But the technical fluency requirements for a game designer are not that high, and thus are almost certainly not the cause of "un-fun" gameplay in any number of crappy games that release every year.

      --
      Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
    2. Re:Some dev's are clueless... by loutr · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I love WoW, and played more than my share of Diablo (both of them), and I don't think you're being fair by saying that we play "SOLELY" for the loot.

      I'm in a guild with very nice and interesting people, some of whom have become good friends, and I like to play with them just for the sake of messing around. When we down a raid boss for the first time, the thrill of watching the last few % of his life bar go down, hoping that it will get to 0 faster than my mana bar (I'm a healer) is much more enticing than the loot that we will get.

      Of course getting a shiny new piece of gear is rather pleasing, but the real reward is seeing new content, downing new bosses, and enjoying the gameplay. The loot is one of the rewards, not the only one. Else I would still be playing D2 and would'nt be paying my 13 euros per month...

    3. Re:Some dev's are clueless... by Weedlekin · · Score: 2, Interesting

      "Blizzard has proven that there are tens of millions of gamers who game SOLELY for the objective of collecting incrementally improving loot."

      Those games are actually proof of the fact that Blizzard are good at making games which appeal to a wide range of people for all sorts of different reasons. It's the designers who think WOW or Diablo's success are "SOLELY" due to one or two factors that end up producing stuff which only appeals to a sub-set of people who play Blizzard games in a particular way, thereby denying them the massive success that Blizzard's offerings enjoy.

      --
      I'm not going to change your sheets again, Mr. Hastings.
  2. Innovative? by RogueyWon · · Score: 4, Interesting

    On the basis of 3 hours or so play, it's a pretty but generally uninspired 3d Diablo clone, at heart. Sure, it mixes Norse mythology with sci-fi, but that's hardly new. Just ask John Romero - I seem to remember him at least partly doing that in Daikatana (although if, like most people, you only played the demo, you won't have seen those bits). It's also really easy, the enemies seem to auto-scale (a la Oblivion), which is a feature that should be consigned to the dustbin of history, and the camera is annoying. Personally, I'd go for a 6 on 10. Maybe a 7 on the basis of the graphics.

    Is this just another case of Derek Smart thinking his IQ is at least twice what it really is?

    1. Re:Innovative? by prestomation · · Score: 2, Interesting

      What don't you like about the enemy autoscaling? I thought Oblivion was nice in how you can more finely define how hard the game is, even while you're playing it.

    2. Re:Innovative? by Feanturi · · Score: 4, Interesting

      What I don't like about the auto-scaling in Oblivion is that the game tends to remain at the same relative difficulty at all times. For an open-ended game where you can access just about anywhere in the world from the beginning of the game, this is no fun. There should be all sorts of places that will get you destroyed until you've been around the block a few times, then you can come back to those areas later and *this time* clear them. That's an accomplishment for you as a player, winning against something that previously kicked your ass. With auto-scaling, this doesn't really happen, you just pick somewhere to go, clear it, go somewhere else, clear that, etc. Don't get me wrong, I loved Oblivion, but various bits of it needed work, and the level scaling thing was one of them.

    3. Re:Innovative? by mdfst13 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I think that you are looking at two different things:

      Feanturi: being able to arbitrarily go to any place in the game and be competitive makes it hard to have a progressive and coherent story. This leads to boring games without good story lines.

      Doctor_Jest: having the difficulty for a place in the game be such that you need to be level X to play it forces you into meaningless activities purely to gain levels. This is boring.

      It's at least conceivable that one could address both concerns in the same game. Have scaling, but also have dependencies for various missions. If you haven't completed the dependencies for a mission, then the scaling should be set high (and NPCs should warn you away from that area and point you back where you should be).

      It seems to me that Diablo II did that by simply prohibiting you from certain areas until you had completed the prior missions. However, the Diablo II scaling for necromancers was bad for me, as I got stuck needing a Blood Golem (IIRC) to defeat Andariel. This led me to grind for a while to get up to the necessary level.

      Playing the game in story order (possibly with some side missions that are optional) while always being tough enough to be challenging but not so tough to be impossible makes for a more fun gaming experience. Making that happen with as few limits on gameplay as possible is difficult but should not be impossible.

    4. Re:Innovative? by Gorath99 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      That's interesting. In my experience the auto-scaling actually destroys much of the story.

      In Morrowind, I really liked how the world didn't revolve around me. The world just was. It didn't seem like it needed the player to justify its existence. That really increased my immersion in the game. I also really felt that my character was developing. Challenges (both in and out of combat) that I couldn't handle before eventually became doable, and later trivally easy. That really complemented the story in which you became a truly legendary character.

      You could also effectively choose how difficult the game was for you. If you wanted to be a pilgrim, a merchant, or some other non-combat profession you could easily do that. You'd just have to avoid the really dangerous areas of the map, which was straightforward, and you would still have huge areas to enjoy. In Oblivion this doesn't work anymore. If you level on non-combat skills, the whole world becomes more and more dangerous until the point where you're constantly assailed by opponents you can't handle, wherever you go. Leveling now becomes a punishment instead of a reward.

      Also, I find it really destroys suspension of disbelief when eventually every highwayman wields magical items that are worth a small kingdom, peaceful lands are roamed by packs of minotaurs and trolls, and all sewers are filled to the brim by epic goblins. And besides that, it's simply annoying. I don't want highwaymen to remain challenging. They're just not interesting enough for that. Once I'm a renowned hero, I should be able to dispatch them with ease. Beowulf, Achilles, or Aragorn struggling with a band of nameless thugs every couple of minutes when traveling through peaceful lands, does not a good story make.

    5. Re:Innovative? by Danse · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Doctor_Jest: having the difficulty for a place in the game be such that you need to be level X to play it forces you into meaningless activities purely to gain levels. This is boring.

      If all of the areas that a low-level player could handle are somehow less meaningful than a more difficult area, then that's just bad design. There's absolutely no reason that low-level areas and quests should have to be "meaningless". There should be plenty for a low-level character to do without having to grind for levels to get to interesting content.

      --
      It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
  3. Try it for yourself by Admodieus · · Score: 3, Interesting

    There's a demo on Marketplace that allows you to play as every class (through an easter egg, intentionally left in by Silicon Knights). I think a lot of reviewers expected the world from this game. I expected a dungeon crawler/action RPG similar to Phantasy Star Online and Diablo. I'm very happy with the end product. Personally, I'd give te game an 8.2, or in letter grading terms, a B-. It has some problems - namely, the length, some camera issues, and a weak story - but the core gameplay is FUN. And that's what's important to me.

    --
    "It's a reverse vampire...they....they crave the sun!"
  4. Re:Seems pretty fair... by _xeno_ · · Score: 2, Interesting

    But then, the whole review thing is silly most places. If a game gets less than 9/10 then it's a bad game. 8.5 is a bad score it seems. A game scoring 6-7 is still in the upper half of the quality scale

    Another poster below reveals the reason for the upper-half-only review thing you get with 10-point scales:

    Personally, I'd give te game an 8.2, or in letter grading terms, a B-.

    When you're using that scoring system, 1-5 is an F, 6 is a D, 7 is a C, 8 is a B, and 9-10 are an A. C is defined as "average," so anything less than a 7 is "below average" and 6/10 becomes a bad game.

    It seems kind of silly to me. The whole "percent to letter grade" thing makes some amount of sense in school, but when reviewing, it means that you limit yourself to the upper half of the scale, and make anything below a 5 essentially meaningless.

    But that's why you see review scores treated the way they do. Everyone treats them as a test grade from school, and a 6/10 is a low grade on a test.

    --
    You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
  5. Re:Don't get it. by Doctor_Jest · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Okay. Let's get valid. It's just another FPS. It has no discernible story (when it's not a paper-thin attempt to link the games with backstory no one seems to bother caring about), most of the time it's just the same old "shoot everything that moves, and if it doesn't move, pick it up and use it to shoot everything that moves." It doesn't break any technological ground (it's not even 720p on the 360), nor does it bag the cliche's for something fresh. It's not the be-all-end-all revolutionary game for consoles that MS marketroid hype has made it out to be. It's fine if it's popular, and it's certainly find if you like it or if millions like it.

    Is it fun for some people? Sure. But don't excuse all criticism of the game as some snooty "back in my day" sort of claims and relegate all people who don't like the game in some sort of club that hate things because they're popular.

    Give me an Oblivion or Too Human over Halo any day. Does that make me less intelligent than the Halo crowd? If it makes them sleep better at night... go for it. ;)

    --
    It's the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man.
  6. Re:Don't get it. by AstrumPreliator · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Fine, I'll give you some valid reasons. Halo isn't a bad game, it really isn't. However, it's not a good game either, it's mediocre. I was excited as hell for Halo before Microsoft bought out Bungie. I remember seeing the original videos and pictures and though it was going to be an amazing game. Even after Microsoft bought Bungie I wasn't deterred, I bought an Xbox solely for Halo. When I played it I found it wasn't that good. It wasn't original, it wasn't unique, it was just there. Thanks to Microsofts huge PR push it became an instant hit though and spawned two sequels and soon an RTS. It's widely proclaimed to be one of the best FPS games by Halo players, which leads me to assume they have little experience with FPS games that came before it. I'd even rate Goldeneye for the N64 (to keep it console only) much higher than Halo. Don't get me wrong, playing Halo 3 multiplayer with friends while drinking a few beers is fun, but not fun enough to buy the game.

    It's not that we're hating on kids, but they are a new generation of gamers. One which I think are more concerned with pretty graphics than gameplay. I still go back to old games and love to play them. Of course I can't get the Halo gamer types to pick them up at all. So in this regard I agree with the GP that they wouldn't get Grim Fandango or Fallout or even games in the same vein.

    Note that I'm not saying Too Human is good or bad. I played the demo and found it moderately fun, but didn't get the urge to buy it from playing the demo.